Minneapolis has a Somali Low Power FM station

In the wake of the Somali civil war of the 1990s, many people from that country have migrated to Minneapolis. In fact, the city has a neighborhood called Little Mogadishu where Somali immigrants live—around 14,000 of them. Now Minneapolis also has a Low Power FM radio station that focuses on their lives and concerns.

KALY-FM 101.7 FM started offering broadcasts last month during the Eid al-Adha holiday. Situated in South Minneapolis, its Program Director Mahamed Cali says the signal’s primary focus will be on helping Somali listeners learn “how to communicate, how to order at a restaurant, talk to their landlord, how the system of education works, [and] how the country works.”

The Prometheus Radio Project helped get the operation going. It is the first Somali oriented FM radio station in the United States. Around one out of three Somalis in the USA (around 85,000) live in Minnesota. Significant groups also live in Washington, California, and Ohio.

About Matthew Lasar

Matthew Lasar is a co-founder of Radio Survivor and its business manager. He is the author of Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium (http://tinyurl.com/jr8uknk) and teaches history at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Likes: deejays, classical music, Disco, postpunk, cats, free school lunches. Dislikes: money, ideologies, claims that technology will fix everything. Follow him on twitter at @matthewlasar.